Welcome to Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Business edition

09/14/2017

6 minutes to read

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In this article

Finance and Operations, Business edition is a business management solution for small and mid-sized organizations that automates and streamlines business processes and helps you manage your business. Signing up is easy, and you can migrate existing business data from your legacy system.
When you sign up for the Finance and Operations, Business edition preview you get access to a demonstration company. The demonstration company contains sample data, but you can create your own sales documents, for example, or set up a bank account.

Get to know Finance and Operations, Business edition

In Finance and Operations, Business edition, some things will be familiar to you, and other things might be unfamiliar. In the demonstration company, visual guides explain core functionality, and help you try out daily tasks like creating a sales invoice and viewing a report. If you leave a guide, for example, to explore Finance and Operations, Business edition on your own, but want to return to it, go back to the Home page and launch the Getting Started tour.

When you are ready to start working and you want to look at some of the business processes that Finance and Operations, Business edition supports, see Business Functionality. For an overview of current capabilities and what is coming, take a look at our roadmap at roadmap.dynamics.com.

The Home pages

Home pages use a role-centric design to give you fast access to the business process and intelligence tools that you need to do your job. For example, an accountant can monitor payments and approvals, and view finance performance charts. Check out the various Home pages by choosing the Settings icon in the top right corner, choosing My Settings, and then the Role Center to explore. Sign in again to apply the change. For more information, see Changing the Role Center.

Each Home page provides a Setup and Extensions button. Here you have access to a list of assisted setup that can help you get started by setting selected areas up quickly. If an area is not covered by an assisted setup, choose the Manual Setup action to access setup windows where you can fill in setup fields for all areas manually. For more information, see also Setting Up Finance and Operations, Business edition.

Note

The list of setup guides, extensions, and services that are available differ depending on the user experience you choose for your company. The Basic experience gives access to fewer than the Suite experience does. The first time you sign in, you use the Basic experience. For more information, see Customizing Your Finance and Operations, Business edition Experience.

In the Assisted Setup window, you will find the following with the Suite experience:

Assisted Setup

Description

Migrate Business Data

Lets you import your existing company data such as vendors, customers, and items from Excel or Quickbooks.

Set Up My Company

Creates a new trial company for you to enter data and try out Finance and Operations, Business edition. If you went through the Getting Started tour this is probably already Completed.

Set Up Cash Flow Forecast

Sets up the Cash Flow Forecast chart, so you can view the predicted movement of cash in and out of your business. The chart is available on the Accountant Role Center.

Set Up Approval Workflows

Sets up the ability to automatically notify an approver when a user tries to create or change certain values on documents, journal lines, or cards, such as an amount above a specified limit.

Set Up a Customer Approval Workflow

Sets up the ability to automatically notify an approver when a user tries to create or change a customer card.

Set Up Email

Gets you ready for sending email messages directly from, for example, sales orders or contacts in Finance and Operations, Business edition.

Set Up Email Logging

Sets up the capability to log email correspondence in Finance and Operations, Business edition to follow up on interactions.

Set Up Outlook for Finance and Operations, Business edition

Sets up the ability to use and launch Finance and Operations, Business edition from Outlook.

Set Up Reporting

Sets up data sets that you can use to build powerful reports using Excel or Power BI, for example.

Set Up an Item Approval Workflow

Sets up the ability to send a notification to an approver when a user changes or creates an item.

Set Up a Payment Approval Workflow

Sets up the ability to send a notification to an approver when a user sends payment journal lines for approval.

Set Up the Finance and Operations, Business edition Connector

Sets up a connection to Dynamics 365 for Sales, which allows you to synchronise data such as contacts and sales order information.

Set Up Sales Tax

Gets you started with default tax groups and assigning tax area codes that you can assign to customers and vendors in order to automatically calculate sales tax in sales or purchase documents.

Trying things out in your own company

Thinking about subscribing? You can easily change from the demonstration company, and create and work in a company of your own. This is a great way to start toward a subscription. Setups for finances are provided; you just need to create or import your customers, vendors, and the products or services that you sell. After that, you're ready to post invoices and use business intelligence tools to analyse your business. You can use your company for free for a 30-day trial period. If you subscribe to Finance and Operations, Business edition during that time, you're already up and running. You can continue with the work you did during the trial.

To create a company to try things out, go to the My Settings menu in the top right corner, and change the company to My Company. Sign out of Finance and Operations, Business edition and then sign in again to apply the change. An assisted setup guide will help you provide basic information about your company. When that's done, explore the Home page and find the Assisted Setup action.

Ready to subscribe?

Each time you sign in during the trial period, a notification in a blue bar at the top displays the time remaining. If you decide to subscribe, use the link in the notification to get in touch with Microsoft. You can also contact the Finance and Operations, Business edition Sales team](https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=828707).

If you are an accountant, you can sign up for Dynamics 365 — Accountant Hub and have seamless integration with Finance and Operations, Business edition. For more information, see Welcome to Dynamics 365 — Accountant Hub.

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